Mr. Balfour in his defense of the secrecy of diplomatic intercourse, says that the work of diplomacy is exactly similar to the work which is done every day between two great business firms. He then argues that, in all such relationships, it is unwise to air difficulties in public. Bismarck used the more homely illustration of a horse trade, the participants in which should not be expected to tell each other all they know about the prospective bargain. That view is putting diplomacy on a rather lowly footing. One might expect a somewhat different temper among men dealing with momentous public affairs than the bluff-and-haggle of a petty private transaction. Yet such tactics have actually been found useful in diplomacy. Mr. Balfour is on sounder ground when he says, “In private, in conversations which need not go beyond the walls of the room in which you are, both parties may put their case as strongly as they like and no soreness remains,” but “directly a controversy becomes public, all that fair give-and-take becomes difficult or impossible.” This, of course, implies a somewhat low estimate of public intelligence and self-control, of which more later. The greatest vice of a secret diplomatic policy, working in the dark and concealing international undertakings, lies in the inevitable generating of mutual suspicion and the total destruction of public confidence among the different countries which compose the family of nations. No nation is so bad as imagination, confused and poisoned by secrecy and by the suggestion of dire plottings, would paint it. Agreements and understandings which do not exist at all are imagined, the nature of those which actually have been made is misjudged, and animosities are exaggerated; thus the public is quite naturally put in that mood of suspicion and excitement which renders it incapable of judging calmly when apparently startling facts suddenly emerge. Secret diplomacy destroys public confidence, however, in a still more insidious manner: by the practice of using a language of ideal aims and humanitarian professions in order to conceal and veil the most narrowly selfish, unjust and unconscionable actions. The conventional language of diplomacy still carries in it many of the phrases and concepts instilled by the false idealism of the eighteenth century, to which at that time diplomacy gave lip worship. The most disconcerting performances of this kind are the profuse and reiterated declarations promising the maintenance of the sovereignty, independence and integrity of certain countries, when in fact the action really taken was quite to the contrary effect.